WASHINGTON  In a letter to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., Tuesday, Jefferson said he would take a temporary leave from his position on the House Small Business Committee until his racketeering case is resolved.

But Jefferson, who was accused by a federal grand jury Monday of accepting more than $400,000 in bribes in exchange for using his office to help arrange business deals in Africa, said his action was in no way an admission of guilt.

"I have supported every ethics and lobbying reform measure that you and our Democratic majority have authored," he said. "I make this request for leave to support the letter and spirit of your leadership in this area."

In addition to the federal charges, Jefferson faces an effort by House Republicans to have him expelled from the chamber.

House Minority Leader John A. Boehner, R-Ohio, plans to offer a resolution later Tuesday to try to force the House ethics committee to report to the full House within a month on whether Jefferson should be expelled.

"He intends to offer the resolution this evening during votes," said Brian Kennedy, a spokesman for Boehner.

Jefferson wasn't expected to return to his Capitol Hill office Tuesday, according to spokeswoman Remi Braden-Cooper.

The 94-page indictment lays out an elaborate scheme in which the New Orleans Democrat allegedly used his influence, his staff and his official travel to broker private deals on trips abroad, securing hidden fees for himself and his relatives.

The long-awaited charges marked a setback for Democrats, who gained control of Congress after making political corruption an issue in last year's election.

If convicted, Jefferson could face decades in prison. Two former associates, who pleaded guilty to bribing him, have been sentenced to lengthy terms — eight years in one case and nine in another.

Jefferson is accused of paying off a Nigerian politician. He is the first sitting congressman to be charged under the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, which prohibits U.S. citizens from bribing foreign officials, said Chuck Rosenberg, U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia, where the case was brought. The congressman faces 15 other charges, including conspiracy, bribery, money laundering, wire fraud, obstruction of justice and racketeering.

"This case is about greed, power and arrogance," said Joseph Persichini, who leads the FBI's Washington field office.

Jefferson's lawyer, Robert Trout, said his client is innocent. "While we recognize that there was certain activity, we really believe you can't characterize that as official conduct," Trout said.

It was a bleak day for the Harvard-educated Jefferson, a nine-term lawmaker whose official biography calls him the first African-American congressman elected in Louisiana since Reconstruction. But the criminal charges are also an embarrassment for Democrats, adding pressure on Democratic congressional leaders to toughen ethics rules, analysts say.

"Voters tend to blame the party in power for corruption issues," said Julian Zelizer, a congressional historian at Boston University.

Until now, the members of Congress facing criminal charges of late all have been Republicans.

Rep. Bob Ney, R-Ohio, resigned and pleaded guilty to taking bribes last year as part of the Jack Abramoff lobbying scandal, and Rep. Randy "Duke" Cunningham, R-Calif., admitted guilt the year before in a separate bribery scheme. Democrats won both houses of Congress last fall in part because of what voters had perceived as a culture of corruption under Republicans, according to exit polling.

Pelosi promised to "drain the swamp," as she put it. Although the House toughened gift restrictions, an effort to overhaul the way Congress polices its ethics rules is unresolved. A task force that has been examining whether the House should create an outside panel to investigate ethics violations missed a May 1 deadline to report its findings.

"With nothing to fear from the ethics committee … many members of Congress fly too close to the flame," said Meredith McGehee, Policy Director for the Campaign Legal Center, a watchdog group. Jefferson was removed from the tax-writing Ways and Means Committee after court documents said the FBI found $90,000 in marked bills in his freezer in 2005.

On Monday, Pelsosi said of the indictment: "If these charges are proven true, they constitute an egregious and unacceptable abuse of public trust and power."

Boehner called for the House Ethics Committee to examine whether Jefferson, who was re-elected despite the investigation, should be expelled. Traditionally, House members must be convicted before expulsion proceedings go forward; the last member expelled was James Traficant, an Ohio Democrat, who was sentenced to prison for corruption in 2002.

During the long-running investigation of Jefferson, federal agents conducted an unprecedented raid on his Capitol Hill office in May 2006, seizing boxes of documents. That search has become the subject of a court battle over the separation of powers between equal branches of government.

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Jefferson in 2006. The indictment is 94 pages long and lists 16 alleged violations of federal law that could keep Jefferson in prison for up to 235 years.

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